


The Riddle

by weeesi



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, True Love, a tiny bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:13:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeesi/pseuds/weeesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Devours, he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Riddle

**Author's Note:**

> I finished reading TSoA today and was emotionally compromised, so I had to write.  
> Not beta'd. Any mistakes are my own and the product of too much crying.

I long for him.

A burst of wind lifts a handful of golden curls and dances them across the nape of his neck, skin olive brown and damp with sweat and seawater. We are along the shore, alone. My eyes trace his body's smooth curves as he stands with his back to me, lost in a moment of contemplation as the sun kisses the sea. Cypress trees release their summer fragrance around us like a halo, cicadas buzz in the tall thin grass.

He has always been better with words than I, and better with silence too. I study the length of his shoulders, the sculpted lines of his back, his spine sturdy and straight and strong, the twin dimples nestled above the curves of his backside. There is not one part or piece of him that does not please me, does not compel to me compose poems in my head, whispered to him in his sleep. I watch him mindlessly spread his legs apart, adjusting his stance, revealing himself. Heat pools between my legs. The sinewed muscles in his body clench, showing their strength, then release as he turns to match my gaze.

My heartbeat stammers. The salty air blurs between us.

How many moments, minutes, hours, could I spend in adoration? Eternity would pass without my notice and I would be here still, drinking him in slowly, like the last solitary cup of watered wine.

The curve of his lip reveals his thoughts, the mischievous twitch of an eyebrow, the flicker of the insides of his wrists.

"Patroclus."

Pa-tro-clus.

My soul is hungry for him.

I swallow as he lowers himself gracefully onto his discarded tunic, spread out carefully atop the soft sand dunes. The warmth coming off of his body sends a shiver through me. Meeting his eyes is strangely like looking directly into the sun and finding yourself not blinded, but healed. How can he love me? An ordinary, clumsy, exiled ex-prince. He is half-god. I am half of a half of what any lover of his should be.

And yet.

"Patroclus, do you know what I am thinking of." He does not raise his voice in question as he flexes his feet and stretches out on his back, limbs quickly drying, encouraged by the tightly woven linen of his tunic and the heat of my gaze.

"No." I fall onto my back beside him. Our hands find each other and wrap tightly palm to palm. He turns his head to smile at me. The heat between my legs is relentless, my pulse quickens as he raises himself up on an elbow. His breath falls onto my chest in waves, matched to the sea.

"I am thinking of a riddle." He strokes the knuckle of my thumb with his thumb. A evening bird sings in the distance, perched on a fig tree. Dusk is settling on his features, softening the lines of his face, strengthening the glow in his eyes. He smells of the sea and of pomegranate oil and of something else that is all his own.

I love him. I love him. How I love him.

"And I am to solve it?"

"Yes." He falls back onto his tunic again, rolling his head over his arm and then onto his side to face me. The tunic wrinkles beneath him, sand spilling against his skin. He does not let go of my hand. We are tethered, bobbing dry alongside the sea. "I will tell it to you now, if you like."

"Go on."

"What is it which devours everything before and everything after?"

His eyelashes flutter with pleasure, his chin juts out slightly at my bashful silence. Slowly, he brings my fingers to his lips, the kiss left there wet and round.

Devours, he says.

My stomach heats, the truth of my desire betrayed in warm blood building in the satin skin nestled between my legs.

I blink. "Devours everything before and everything after." A faint crash of waves against the beach, my pulse in his hand. I blink again. "It cannot be an animal?"

"No." Another kiss presses onto my hand. The bow of his lips burns into my palm, the touch of his fingers a salve. "It is not an animal." His voice is clear and bright. Assured. God-like. He shifts closer to me. The heat radiating off his skin is nearly unbearable. I glance down between his legs.

I feign deep concentration as I notice he too is not unchanged by the closeness of our bodies.

Devours, he had said.

I clear my throat and look up again to meet his eyes. I memorised their shape and gleam and moods and colour long ago, but I cannot look elsewhere, now. Not from habit, not from obligation. It is the simple fact that no other eyes exist for me.

He smiles again and traces a constellation on my thigh. I cannot tell which. I am distracted by the way he holds his mouth, the way the dusky breeze plays with his curls, the way the blood in my body pulses and shifts and heats at his every whim.

"Achilles." His name is sweet on my tongue. "Surely it is not one of your kin? A god or goddess come to claim what is theirs?" Our skin is nearly touching. I can almost feel a vibration between us, magnetic.

"No, it is not." He raises my hand to his cheek, which flushes rosy at my touch. "And I am not a god," he whispers, eyes steady and dark. "I am still mortal, just like you."

"But you will be a hero someday." Our feet tangle of their own accord. Sand, cool now, slips into the shadows between our toes.

"Ah, you are getting closer to the riddle's answer." He reaches for me boldly, his sure fist curling around the length of me. I nearly cry out. His curls are glowing in the twilight against the auburn memory of sunset. I press our bodies together so that there is no space between. He is warm and solid and strong and everything I never deserved.

"Patroclus." His voice is breathy now, like music made by wind through a reed. Slowly, his hand moves. I tuck my forehead against his shoulder. I am panting. My mouth is dry. His mouth is wet.

"Someday, Achilles. You will be..." I let my words fade as I sneak my fingers around him, gently holding him, hard and hot. We begin to move together. Our wrists rub, alternating insides and outsides of white and brown, the skin of our thighs sliding in the sand. He is whispering something in my ear. I cannot hear him. I am swept away by sensation, by the comfort of his body.

We quicken our pace, hands slick with ourselves, pressing closer under the growing cover of darkness and the tall thin grass. As our hands work, my lips move from the taut muscle of his shoulder to the curve of his neck to the secret space under his ear to the bud of his lips. My lips have made a home there, and they are always welcomed.

Our motions are purposeful, practiced. We breathe together.

Devour.

Achilles. Achilles. Achilles.

He is a dichotomy. He is my most beloved.

I spill my release hot and thick between our bodies, between his steady fingers. He does shortly after, holding me tight against him, a sigh escaping from deep in his chest. There is no tension or desperation here, no extravagance. There is just me, and him, and a sandy tunic for a bed. He kisses into my mouth. The tide falls away, pulled back to the sea. Stars slowly reveal themselves. We are still holding hands.

Death is coming for us.

"Time." I pull back from his kiss, just barely. "Your riddle. That is the answer."

He gives me a sad, sweet smile.

If nothing else, let me remember this.

And this, and this.


End file.
